Creating a Right to Assisted Suicide in Tennessee (August 5, 2015)

Did it ever cross your mind that the Supreme Court’s same-sex “marriage” decision might give rise to a constitutional “right to die” that would make Tennessee’s laws against physician-assisted suicide unconstitutional? If not, then it should.

In a pending lawsuit in Tennessee arguing that our law is unconstitutional, the marriage decision was cited as legal support for a constitutional right to die. The reason is that the Court’s recent marriage decision essentially rejected the reasoning the Court used almost twenty years ago in deciding that assisted suicide was not a constitutional right.

But since the Court also said twenty years ago that same-sex “marriage” was not a constitutional right, what will keep the Court from changing its mind on this issue? The answer is nothing. We must understand that more than marriage was affected the Court’s recent decision.